"Heads up, winter storm warning," my friend writes me. Why did we book holiday flights through the east coast? When you can fly direct to LA? Because it was going to be so good! I was going to get to visit with my friend Mary for hours. She had offered to take me home so I could take a shower before the flight to San Francisco, she would have made me her newly-invented drink. Washington is expected to get two feet of snow, when one inch of snow shuts them down? Maybe our flight will be delayed or diverted. Mary is wise and realizes she needs to stay put for the snowpocolaspe.
At the airport, the flashing red words in Russian mean our flight has been cancelled. They tell us to come back tomorrow for the same flight, with no explanation. I'm so worried about how we are going to get back to the house, the driver has left, that I don't do the simple math: one plane, twice as many people, and we are now on stand-by. On a plane that may or may not be leaving. The phrase "declared a state of emergency" doesn't sound like a problem that will be solved tomorrow by noon.
A long and expensive cab ride back home, we wheel our four suitcases back in the house.
In the afternoon I decide to take the camera and go for a walk. I need stuff for dinner now, and Moscow is very pretty these days with clear skies and a Neiman-Marcus-Christmas-window-display sprinkle of fresh snow. I walk to Red Square. I had a blast taking pictures. I found a bakery I've been wondering about. I wandered through GUM and bought Stefan some fancy Russian chocolate powder. He's addicted to hot chocolate lately, and we just ran out of the Monbana chocolate powder he's acquired a taste for. We bought it on the way home from Lisbon at the Charles de Gaulle airport.
At Red Square there is some sort of event going on and you have to go around some railings to get in. Some Americans are confused and want to get into Red Square and the police are telling them they can't get in. The Americans are arguing. The police are not telling them they just need to go past the railed-off area. The Russians beat Napolean and the Germans, they are not going to start explaining things to Americans.
I come out on the wrong side of GUM and now that it's dark can't figure out how to get to the street that takes me home. I ask someone where the Novy Arbat is, "It's very far," she tells me. This could mean two blocks, sometimes the Russians are funny about walking, or it could mean I'm going to freeze to death on the far side of the Kremlin. I'm wearing gloves and mittens and my fingers are so cold they hurt. I went in a metro to get oriented and ended up metro-ing home, it's warmer. I thought I was going to one particular stop, but when I came up out of the metro, I was at different one. I have no idea how I ended up there, but I knew where I was, bought a kilo of mandarins and was back home.
Peter and Melissa spent hours on hold with United. The first flight available where we'd have actual seats is the 26th. Or I could go to the airport everyday–$120 round trip taxi ride–and try to fly stand-by, with four bags and two kids. My rescue-workers, Peter and Melissa, got us a flight tomorrow to Charles de Gaulle, a hotel room, and then the next day Paris to San Francisco. "Now we can buy more of that chocolate!" says Stefan.
It's snowing in Moscow, but they won't shut down the airport here because of snow. They closed airports in France due to snow last week, and they are still getting snow, but it looks like the worse of it is over. Right now, I'm cozy in our house, not stuck in some hotel somewhere. I'm going to make crepes for the kids for breakfast. We'll be home for Christmas, eventually.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 
Leave a comment